Author Archives: Randophonic

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About Randophonic

For now, I'm best thought of as a radio program. Sometimes it may seem I'm all the work of one person, other times many. What matters is the program.

499. done changed my way of living

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“It says 1968 on the record jacket but this Taj Mahal stomper is pure 1998 for me, serving as a personal anthem while I scaled back certain extremes of lifestyle, making that decision that most of us make as we see our forties looming – to not just burn out, but to change, because change is good, certainly the kind you choose to make. Like maybe opening your mind, maybe starting to actually ‘get’ the blues. Not just the obvious stuff, howling and mean. No, the real stuff, or real enough anyway, whatever Taj Mahal was digging up and dealing out way back when.” (Philip Random)

TajMahal-1968-withBIRDS

500. guns of Brixton

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“More than any other track, I’m thinking Guns of Brixton is what hooked me to the Clash. Because as much as I’d enjoyed their punk and powerful raving and drooling, this was obviously something else. Reggae, I guess, but not really. Because there’s way more going on here than just some white people ripping off Jamaican sounds, making it all sound like tourist music. Nah, Guns of Brixton is dangerous. What do you do when the cops bust in?” (Philip Random)

Clash-1979-room

501. 16 tons

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The album title Wereldsuccessen says it all (a Dutch double vinyl compilation that I grabbed one day at a yard sale). Because by 1970, Mr. Tom Jones was an international monster, a force of passion and life that had more or less conquered all comers be they hip or straight, cool or absurd, and all by taking none of it remotely seriously. Except maybe when he took on 16 Tons, the old mining song, his Welsh blood rising, giving voice to who knows how many ghosts.

TomJones-1970-cookingSteak

502. country death song

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The Violent Femmes‘ debut album tends to get most of the hype, but the follow up Hallowed Ground is better. It goes deeper, rocks harder, bites more fiercely, covers more ground. And it kicks off with Country Death Song, a murder ballad that gets all the more harrowing when you realize that Gordon Gano was still in high school when he wrote it.  The opposite of a feel-good unless you just can’t enough of that those toe tapping backwoods American myths and legends and brutal truths.

violentFEMMES-1984-promo

003. reSEARCH – courage + yarbles

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Installment #3 of what we’re calling The Research Series aired Sunday, March-25-2018.

The third of a planned forty-nine movies, each forty-nine minutes long, featuring no particular artist, working no particular theme, pursuing no particular agenda beyond boldly going … who knows? Or as Werner Von Braun once put it, “Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” And we definitely have no idea where all this will take us.

reSEARCH-03

003. reSEARCH – courage + yarbles

Boards of Canada – geodaddi
Amorphous Androgynous – swab
Pink Floyd – the narrow excerpt
Skip Spence – books of Moses
Bob Dylan – Visions of Johanna [live]
Holger Czukay – boat woman [excerpt]
Jon Hassel – courage
Randophonic – MASH immaculate
Fall – to nkroachment/yarbles
Beans – all planets
Grandaddy – he’s simple he’s dumb he’s the pilot [part 2]
Led Zeppelin – Bron-Y-Aur

Further installments of the Research Stuff will air most Sundays at approximately 1am (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with streaming and download options usually available within twenty-four hours via our Facebook page.

 

503. I Travel

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“Back in the very early 1980s, before they became huge, absurd and even stupider than their name implied, Simple Minds were pretty darned cool. Smart modern beats and grooves that weren’t afraid to be dance-able. Lots of pumped up sonics, often machine driven, but hinting at an inner light. And they were strong live. I’m guessing I Travel was about being on the road, not that I ever bothered to study it. Just did what it was telling me, which was hit the dance floor, shake off the ghosts, be glad I was alive in interesting times.” (Philip Random)